This is not an easy column to write, for several reasons. First, my wife doesn’t want me to write it. She feels it’s too personal and raises an issue that we find challenging to confront, namely, the safety of sons at war.

Second, the Jewish concept of Ayin Harah (the evil eye,) either real or an imagined superstition, cautions against discussing certain issues so as not to jinx them. Israel is at war. Let’s pray in general but not speak about anything in particular.

Third, I have a lot of anger about this particular issue. How did God allow so many Jews to die in a single day 80 years after and after the creation of a state and an army that are supposed to protect them? And fourth, my thoughts on the subject are not in any way fully formed. When you have sons fighting in the IDF, you live in a state of personal and permanent emotional conflict about the war and about the state of the Jewish people.

Pride and fear. Defiance and surrender. Love and hate.

You’re confused. Better not to write, isn’t it? On the one hand, we’re an American family. My son Mendy was born in , where I served as the Rebbe’s shaliach (emissary) and rabbi at the university, and my son Yosef was born in Englewood, NJ.

What the heck are my American sons doing at war in the Middle East against savage terrorists? On the other hand (and I know I now sound like Tevye the milkman,) don’t all Jews have to bear the burden of Israel and the Jewish people’s security? Then again, why my sons, who .